I’ve always loved writing. No idea where this love comes from. My Dad was an engineer. My Mum worked in a shop. But they both shared a love of reading. The written word was always important to them, and it became vitally important to me. Little did I know, that as a young lad, living in a prefab on a …
Feeling flat is a fairly common occurrence. It can happen at many times throughout your life, like when you’re on a diet. You’ve cut calories. You’re doing your 10,000 steps a day. You’ve eaten more fruit than a monkey. And yet, when you step on the scales the needle appears to be stuck. Your weight isn’t going anywhere. You’ve plateaued. …
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.” So said Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Fast forward several hundred years, and ask yourself – how can you make your business great? If you were born into a successful family business, well done. If you had success land in your lap as a result of …
You’re driving your car and a warning light comes on. What you do next could have serious implications? You might decide to stop at the nearest service station and sort it out. You could make a mental note to book your car into a garage. Or, the worst option of all, you ignore the warning light altogether and hope it …
“You are cleared for take-off.” “Just a moment. What does that button do?” Let’s be honest, you’d never attempt to fly a plane unless you were totally confident with the controls, had been properly trained and knew exactly how everything worked. But when it comes to a business taking off, that’s exactly what many owners do. They hope their business …
As a business leader, we’d like to suggest a new way to improve your business – open a book. Reading is one of the quickest, simplest, and most inexpensive ways a business owner can scale up. “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader,” ~ Margaret Fuller. How can reading books change your business? Reading stops you becoming a dinosaur. The world …
“Because it’s there.” That was George Mallory’s classic reply when asked why he wanted to climb Everest. As a business owner, if we were to ask why you chose your particular path, “because it’s there” really won’t cut it. Perhaps it’s because you want to make lots of money, or because you enjoy what you do, or because you want …
In the classic Joseph Heller novel Catch-22, airman John Yossarian is faced with the ultimate dilemma. He discovers that it’s impossible to be excused from bombing duty on the grounds of insanity, as anyone who applies for exemption is clearly sane. Anyone who doesn’t apply is clearly insane. So John learns that whether he claims to be sane or insane, …
The founders of Google, Virgin, Microsoft, Dyson and Apple. What did they all have in common, apart from building incredible companies and being richer than Croesus? They all had mentors. But surely, you say, when you have a hugely successful business the last thing you need is advice. No. The reason these founders became so successful is that they each …
There’s a lot of fake news about. It can be disruptive, confusing, divisive. Separating fact from fiction is vital in all areas of life, but no more so than in business. To succeed you need hard evidence, not hearsay. That’s why we’d like to explode eight of the myths currently surrounding strategy. Myth one – Strategy is only necessary if …
